


Renewing Scars

by Mimishijie



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Colonist (Mass Effect), Did I mention there's angst?, EDI is a therapist, Eventual Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, F/M, I'm Bad At Tagging, Infiltrator (Mass Effect), Mass Effect 2, Paragade (Mass Effect), Ruthless (Mass Effect), Scars, Self-Harm, Shepard (Mass Effect) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20390980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimishijie/pseuds/Mimishijie
Summary: Scars are memory. Images of the life one once lived. Being reborn, being fixed, doesn't change that. Her past was hers, the only thing left. She couldn't let it go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect. That pleasure belongs to the esteemable Bioware and such.  
AN: This is a repost of an oooooollllldddd fanfic I had on FF.net. Hopefully I'll actually finish it this time. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

**(Aboard Cerberus' Minutemen Station)**

Shepard stares at the smooth, unblemished skin of her arm.

It isn't _right_.

She'd once had a scar there. From Torfan. A Batarian had shot at her arm as she used her omni-tool to summon her droid. She remembers digging the bullet out, cutting into the flesh of her forearm to remove the shard of white-hot metal. The scar wouldn't have be half as bad if she had just left it alone.

At the time, it had seemed like a good idea.

_At the time, sending your entire unit to die had seemed like a good idea_. Most of Torfan is just a blur now. Screams and pain and panic. Then cold clarity, that one moment when she decided to _kill them all_. She was told later that some of the Batarians had surrendered. She hadn't noticed.

"The Butcher of Torfan."

It isn't right, that the last solid reminder is gone. As if it had never been. As if she had never suffered through it. Erasing the pain she'd felt.

Shepard pulls out the boot knife she always carried—now. And slices into the new skin.

_This_ way. _That_ way. Ripping. Haphazard. The blood flows down her arm, makes the hilt of the knife slippery. At first it burns, fire licking down the path her knife carves. The edge of a scream bubbles up in her throat, but she swallows it down. It _had_ to hurt. The pain means she was human. Doesn't it?

But the pain dulls, dies. What had started with frenzied, almost raging, motions becomes slow and methodical slices as she tries to picture the details of her original wound in her mind.

Just a bit more. She stops and looks at it. It looks almost…right. She drops the bloodstained knife, the sharp ting of metal against metal ringing in the hollow, empty place inside her.

Looking down at the mass of oozing red and torn edges, Commander Shepard is the closest to calm she had been since rising from that cold slab of metal and picking up her gun to fight. It isn't perfect. It isn't the same. But it is better.

* * *

** (In the captain's bathroom of the Normandy SR2)**

Staring at the mirror. The bathroom in her new cabin.

The last Normandy, she had slept in a small thing on the crew deck. Now she is here. First floor, above everything, the whole deck to herself.

_Alone_.

Alone was never a good thing. She realized that too late.

She was young, so happy to have a whole room that was only hers. Two sisters, a brother, and space was always short on Mindoir. But Da had built a whole new floor. A bedroom just for her.

Above everything.

And too far away, when the slavers landed. Her brother and sisters slept on the ground floor, the raiders got there first. Thick floors, thick walls, muffled the noise. She didn't know. She just slept. Her mother and father, in the room across the hall, died fighting. _And she just slept_.

The Batarians burst into her room last. Then she woke up. To fear and grabbing hands. She ran. Past the blood, the fire and screams and begging for mercy. _Got to hide, find safety, get_ away.

She had a scar from then, too. In her back, near the shoulder. She was shot running away from the settlement. The soldiers found her later, behind an outcropping of rock just outside the town, bleeding and in shock. They told her she did the right thing. That she never would have survived if she had stayed.

It didn't help the guilt. Years later—drunk—she would get the names of her family, the date of the attack tattooed just underneath the bullet scar. That didn't help the guilt either. And now it's gone, too.

But ever since then, she doesn't run. She will never leave anyone behind again. Even if it costs her life. It is her atonement. One day she will give her life the way she should have all those years ago.

They'd rebuilt Mindoir. Razed the ruined buildings, put something else in their place. Buried the dead and mourned the lost. New people lived there now. It was better.

They rebuilt the Normandy. It was bigger, with better guns. An AI. New people lived here too. It was better.

They rebuilt her. She is faster. Stronger. Harder to kill. But is she better?

She walks out of the bathroom. Stares at the large bed. After Mindoir, sleeping had become a chore. She _needs_ to know what's going on. Can't be caught unawares anymore. She turns away, grabs her gun and walks out to the elevator.

She'll sleep somewhere else tonight.

* * *

The crew finds her the next morning, sleeping in the shuttle bay. Her eyes snap open at the sound of the first step. She flies up; knife in hand, lashing out at whatever comes close. One crewman is in the med bay later, a wide gash in his leg being stitched up by Dr. Chakwas.

Shepard doesn't sleep outside of her room after that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He shuffles nervously at her continued staring. He asks her how it looks and she tosses out some cheap joke, because she wants him to laugh.
> 
> But he responds almost soberly "You know, some women like scars." Then, wryly, "Mind you, most of those women are krogan."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I checked again today, hoping against hope, but no I still don't own Mass Effect. And the only two lines of dialogue are straight from the game. I'm not that clever.

Breathe.

In. Out. In.

Move faster, always faster. Reach your target, accomplish the goal. Remove anything in your way.

Breathe.

They say N7 training is hard. It's not.

It's hell.

Meant to weed out the weak and destroy the strong, only to rebuild them again, even stronger. It strips you down to the barest essentials, only what you need to survive. To finish your objective.

The only thing that matters is the mission.

That's why she can't break down here, now. He's standing beside her, sniping at the enemy physically and verbally like nothing ever happened. Like it hasn't been two fucking years, like she's never been dead. But she can't remember that. Not, and breathe at the same time. It catches her up, holds her in place with things that can't be important now. She lines up a shot next to him, carefully aims, just like he taught her to, and bang. The merc's shields are down. Another gunshot, loud next to her ears, and the prick has a neat little hole in the front of his head and a somewhat larger one out the back.

Another blue suit, another careful shot. Breathe in again. Bang. Breathe out. Find a rhythm, his raspingly soft, harmonic voice whispers to her from the past. Keep calm. Remember to breathe.

She had thought that was funny, the first time her father taught her to shoot. How could she forget to breathe? It wasn't a thing she had to think about, just a thing she did. But she discovered over time that so many things could halt the breath in her lungs, lock them up so that she had to force the air in and out in harsh, painful pants that seemed to rip her chest open.

Don't think of that. Think of the mission.

The mercs are dead, bodies littering the apartment, and he stands up next to her crowing and celebrating their victory. But the whir of a gunship's engine keeps her alert. It swoops down from above and she has only a second, turning to him, racing for him, too late to stop the fire and heat that hits him dead center.

The blast near knocks her off her feet. She screams for him, praying for an answer. She's is never that lucky. He's lying there motionless, and she can't, she can't…

Breathe.

She only has a moment to duck behind the couch before the guns unload into the small room. The shots end and she lifts her head up, points her gun, and shoots. No aiming, no need, no time. The ship ducks and disappears in an instant. She can hear a voice taunting her over the com, but the words make no sense. Nothing can make sense while he just lies there, while he's not next to her, laughing, shooting. Breathing.

A moment of quiet, her enhanced hearing the only reason she knows the ship isn't gone. Another blast, another volley, and she's actually impressed with how well this couch holds up as cover. She wonders if the Normandy can get couches like this, never know when you might need them.

Hysterically laughing, she shoots again and again, bang bang bang, reloading almost before the last shot's left the barrel. And then the glorious explosion. She closes her eyes and imagines she can hear the bastard screaming as the metal twists and burns around him.

A rasping breath jerks her out of her reverie and she rushes to his side, abandoning her rifle with a clatter. She screams out his name, wants so bad to plead that he stay with her. The blue of his blood stains her hands, dripping away the life of the one person she so desperately needs. He's the only one who knows her, Shepard, knows her past. He is her tie, her tether, and if she loses him now she will spin out into the suffocating void of other people's want and need, their image of her.

It's that image that keeps her mouth shut. That stops her from breaking before the two she had barely acknowledged earlier. Instead, she rips the blood-tinged air into her lungs and begins to bark out orders. The Normandy. He will survive if they can get him to the Normandy. He has to.

She stands in the briefing room listening to Mordin give his report on Archangel's operation in that odd, halting way he has. She doesn't really understand—is only sort of paying attention. Ever since Omega, everything's been muffled, softened by the numb haze surrounding her. The salarian looks peeved, like he knows she isn't listening. But that doesn't matter. All she has to know is it means he's okay. He lived. He's still here with her.

Euphoria begins to suffuse her being, beginning as warmth at the very core of her, then a spreading tingle throughout her body. She want to cry and laugh and dance like she hadn't since she was a child. She opens her mouth to ask if she can see him when the doors behind her whoosh open.

"Shepard." Her name, with his voice. She turns to him; smiling wide, smile fading as she takes in the ruin of his armor, the white patch over his face, covering what she knows will be scars later. Regret fills her at the sight. He should never have to be damaged like this. He always seemed so much purer than her, more innocent, but looking into his eyes she knows he's marked in more than face.

He shuffles nervously at her continued staring. He asks her how it looks and she tosses out some cheap joke, because she wants him to laugh.

But he responds almost soberly "You know, some women like scars." Then, wryly, "Mind you, most of those women are krogan."

She takes halting steps toward him, the hesitation on his face, the surety of rejection a physical pain to her. Standing directly in front of him, she lifts her hand and hovers it just over the bandage, not wanting to touch, to hurt. The sleeve of her suit falls back, revealing the savage scar on her forearm to his surprised eyes.

"I like them, too." Her hand drops, she moves away, beyond him and to the elevator. He doesn't move, doesn't go after her, doesn't say a word as she gets in and nearly punches the button for her cabin.

Again she stands before the mirror in her bathroom. She gazes at her unblemished face, the faintest hint of red pinpricks in her pupils. She looks down at the knife in her hand.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She should never have come back. Should never have gone looking for him.

Should never have died in the first place.

She saw the anger in his eyes, blaming her for leaving him—all of them—to their fates. She died, but time had to keep moving forward, and they moved forward with it. And now she was back, but time hadn't progressed for her. The pain they went through was something she couldn't share, the people they'd become someone she didn't know. And now he suffered for it.

It was her fault, after all.

Resolute, she stands before her reflection and lifts the knife to the right side of her face. Here, where he would be marked for the rest of his life. She would start here.

A clean cut, slowly sliding. The blood only trickles out, like her body hasn't even realized what's happened yet. A second, longer glide and the stinging sets in, blood flowing in earnest now. This time she remembers to set the knife down, to dab away the blood. She learned her lesson from last time. Free of blood, the cuts glow from the circuitry below her skin. So pretty.

She begins to move the knife further up, toward her forehead, breath coming harsher now. In, pause, out, pause, like she's aiming at an enemy. One slice, two, three. She loses count, loses track of time. The room filled will the scent of her blood, but she can only see his, spilling out over her hands. She's gasping, near sobbing when the blade falls from her nerveless hand.

There is only just enough will left in her to move from the bathroom to her bed before collapsing into oblivion, leaving a bloody mess behind.


End file.
